Amazon Launches Cloud Service for Oracle DB Management

The Amazon RDS is designed to manage common and tedious database administration tasks that include provisioning, backups, software patching, monitoring and hardware scaling.

If you've got a complicated
enterprise relational database-specifically Oracle DB-helping run your business,
you now can subscribe to a new cloud service that can help make your life
a whole lot easier.
Amazon Web Services on May
24 launched its own Amazon Relational Database Service specifically for use
with Oracle Database 11g Release 2.

Amazon RDS is designed to
manage common database administration tasks that include provisioning, backups,
software patching, monitoring and hardware scaling-all those housekeeping-type
administrative tasks that are tedious but periodically need to be done.

Oracle Database is the
second supported database engine for Amazon RDS, which already works with
managed MySQL deployments.
The new Amazon service for
Oracle comes in two all-you-can-eat-type licenses: License Included and BYOL (Bring-Your-Own-License).
In the License Included service model, users do not need a separately purchased
Oracle license; the Oracle Database software has been licensed by Amazon Web Services.
License Included pricing
starts at 16 cents per hour per instance, inclusive of software, underlying
hardware resources and Amazon RDS management capabilities, Amazon said.
Under the BYOL model, users
who already own Oracle Database
licenses can run Oracle deployments on Amazon RDS with rates starting at 11
cents per hour, Amazon said. The BYOL model is designed for customers who
prefer to use existing Oracle database licenses or purchase new licenses
directly from Oracle.
The services are based on
hourly pricing with no up-front fees or long-term commitments, Amazon said.
Customers also have the option to purchase Reserved Database Instances under
one- or three-year reservation terms.

Chris Preimesberger was named Editor-in-Chief of Features & Analysis at eWEEK in November 2011. Previously he served eWEEK as Senior Writer, covering a range of IT sectors that include data center systems, cloud computing, storage, virtualization, green IT, e-discovery and IT governance. His blog, Storage Station, is considered a go-to information source. Chris won a national Folio Award for magazine writing in November 2011 for a cover story on Salesforce.com and CEO-founder Marc Benioff, and he has served as a judge for the SIIA Codie Awards since 2005. In previous IT journalism, Chris was a founding editor of both IT Manager's Journal and DevX.com and was managing editor of Software Development magazine. His diverse resume also includes: sportswriter for the Los Angeles Daily News, covering NCAA and NBA basketball, television critic for the Palo Alto Times Tribune, and Sports Information Director at Stanford University. He has served as a correspondent for The Associated Press, covering Stanford and NCAA tournament basketball, since 1983. He has covered a number of major events, including the 1984 Democratic National Convention, a Presidential press conference at the White House in 1993, the Emmy Awards (three times), two Rose Bowls, the Fiesta Bowl, several NCAA men's and women's basketball tournaments, a Formula One Grand Prix auto race, a heavyweight boxing championship bout (Ali vs. Spinks, 1978), and the 1985 Super Bowl. A 1975 graduate of Pepperdine University in Malibu, Calif., Chris has won more than a dozen regional and national awards for his work. He and his wife, Rebecca, have four children and reside in Redwood City, Calif.Follow on Twitter: editingwhiz